Cuban Institutions and Groups

A group of University of Havana students formed in1960 by Juan Manuel Salvat’s Trinchera groups as a wing in the university of the Movimiento de Rescate Revolucionario (MRR).  As the activities of such anti-Castro organizations as the DRE hampered the government’s efforts to control the university, it repressed their members through beatings, expulsion from the university, and […]

A union (central) of trade unions established in January 1939 through the influence of Fulgencio Batista, serving as an umbrella for the then Communist domination of the unions.  It was given official status in 1942, and continued to be Communist controlled until 1947 when President Grau San Martín broke with the Communists, and his anti-Communist labor  minister

Block-to-block vigilante committees established in September 1960 to ensure internal security and public control, and counter the increased anti-government activity then becoming evident, “fighting against the counterrevolutionary class enemy.”  Originally, each Comité de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR) had the sole purpose of serving as an adjunct to the security apparatus of the Interior Ministry and the

The National Institute for Agrarian Reform was established May 17, 1959, to carry out the provisions of the 1959 agrarian reform law.  It was given sweeping authority to organize the collective cultivation of land and to regulate all matters related to agricultural output, landholding, credit, and trade.  Cuba was divided into 28 agrarian development zones,

A body created in 1961 by merging the Partido Socialista Popular, the Movimiento Veintiseis de Julio and the Directorio Revolucionario.  The objective was to unify these major anti-Batista groups into a united party controlled by Fidel Castro and Raul.  It was directed by old-time Communist Aníbal Escalante.  In 1963 the ORI was transformed into the Partido Unido de la Revolución

FREEMASONRY.  Rationalism, in the form of Freemasonry, was a legacy of the British occupation of 1763 and was reinforced by the arrival of French masons fleeing Haiti, until many of these were expelled following the Napoleonic intervention in Spain.  When Cubans learnt in March 1820 of restoration of the Spanish Constitution of 1812, Cuba’s four lodges led

BOHEMIA.  An illustrated magazine, founded by Miguel Ángel Quevedo in Havana in 1908, which became Cuba’s most influential weekly.  In the 1940s and 1950s, when it was a consistent critic of Fulgencio Batista, this “revista enciclopédica” had a 200,000 circulation.  During the struggle to overthrow Batista, it portrayed Fidel Castro as a true Cuban hero in the model of

Orígenes, A “Revista de arte y literatura” founded by José Lezama Lima, which published the major literary figures of the post-World War II era in its 40 issues between 1944 and 1957, a record length of uninterrupted publication for a Cuban literary magazine.  Its circulation and quality made its associates, particularly the poets, the most important

Under the Constitutions of 1976, the “National Assembly of the People’s Power” was called into session for its first meeting as the new legislature under speaker Blas Roca on December 2, 1976.  Headed by a speaker (presidente), deputy speaker (vicepresidente), and a secretary, it has one national deputy (elected for a five-year term) for every

The National Association of Small Farmers is led by a member of the Central Committee of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC).  Its c180,000 members are independent farmers outside the system of state and collective farms.  Their farms constitute about 20% of Cuba’s total cultivated land.  They concentrate mainly on such specialized crops as tobacco,